Move to ARM chip cuts XO Laptop power use to 2 watts

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The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has been making XO Laptops since 2006. The original goal was to create a laptop for kids in developing countries that only cost $100 to manufacture. Although the laptop was made, it ended up costing $199.

While the focus now may be on OLPC’s forthcoming XO-3 Tablet, the XO Laptop continues to be updated. The original device was v1.0, but the current model shipping has had a number of updates and now carries the version number 1.5. At CES last week v1.75 was shown off, and it brings with it some significant improvements thanks mainly to ARM.

One of the major problems of using any electronics hardware in a developing country is gaining access to a reliable power source. The OLPC solved this for the XO Laptop by offering a manual crank charger. The only problem being it took a couple of hours to fully charge the battery.

While the availability of power in certain regions of the world cannot be solved by the OLPC, it can improve upon the power use of the XO Laptop. And with v1.75 they have managed to half that power use. The reason this has been made possible is the move to use an ARM rather than an x86 processor. So now rather than drawing 4 watts of power, the XO-1.75 draws 2 watts. The new chip being used is a 1GHz Armada 610 from Marvell

The news gets better as all the electronics have been moved and fitted behind the 8.9″ touchscreen leaving the base just for the keyboard and battery. Although not stated, we hope this means that the updated laptop can ship with a larger battery too. It also means the laptop is now perfectly setup for an update to tablet form.

As for the elusive $100 price point, OLPC has yet to achieve it but will get closer with the XO-1.75 which will now cost $165 rather than $199.

We can expect to see the XO-1.75 ship in the second quarter of this year.